Fearless: A Cartoonist’s Guide to Life (Reader’s Digest, 2015) is more than a mere cartoonist’s guide to life. It’s my friend’s autobiography, and he had me in tears over parts of this book. It’s amazing and honest and raw and wow are all of his friends proud of him. It’s not easy to bare your soul and raw emotion like that.And parts of the book are also damn funny. It is the story of his life woven with anecdotes and drawing lessons, little inspirational thoughts, and life lessons. And at the end, he gives his readers a list of art supplies.

You will laugh and you will cry and you will love this book. And you might even learn something. It’s a beautiful thing, this book. And it is well deserving of all the accolades it is receiving.

Here is what Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Elizabeth Wellington said today in her article:

Even if you’re just the occasional reader of Jump Start, West Philadelphia native Robb Armstrong’s 27-year-old award-winning comic strip, you’re likely to assume Armstrong lived quite the charmed life…..Yet the reality is Armstrong’s personal life is nothing at all like the pleasantly Technicolor world of his fictional Cobbs.

Armstrong recounts his somewhat tumultuous coming of age in Fearless: A Cartoonist’s Guide to Life (Reader’s Digest, 2015), part self-help book, part memoir. The self-help is delivered in 20 drawing lessons, one at the start of each chapter. Through sketching self-portraits or outdoor scenes and even practicing their lettering, readers (Armstrong hopes) can get in touch with their inner artist and embrace their mistakes….”If you are stuck in a dark underground labyrinth, you don’t want someone to show up and say, ‘Hey, man, it’s dark,’ ” Armstrong said from his home in Burbank, Calif. “You want someone to show up with a flashlight and help you. I want my book to be that flashlight.”